Paying for Use: Rethinking Article Processing Charges as Dissemination Investments in Nutrition Science

Open access has become an important route for making nutrition research available, but availability is not the same as use. Nutrition evidence creates value only when it is interpreted, translated, trusted, and taken up in clinical nutrition, dietetic practice, public health programs, guideline development, policy, and professional education. This commentary argues that article processing charges (APCs) should not be treated merely as publication fees or automatic postacceptance reimbursements but as dissemination investments under resource constraints. Journal Impact Factor (JIF), publisher brand, and open-access (OA) status are visible signals, but they do not necessarily show whether publication spending helps evidence reach intended users. A cross-sectional descriptive analysis of 98 nutrition and dietetics publication venues found a modest positive rank correlation between average JIF and listed APC (Spearman ρ = 0.33). Average JIF alone explained little variation in listed APCs (adjusted R² = 0.03); the adjusted R² increased to 0.56 when OA type was added and to 0.64 when publisher group was added. Although dissemination value was not measured directly, these findings indicate APCs are not simply the price of journal impact. Together with prior research, they support dissemination portfolio management, aligning journal selection for each manuscript and resource allocation across manuscripts with scientific fit, intended users, expected reach, cost, time, and rejection risk. Paying for access is no longer enough; nutrition science must learn to pay for use by reconsidering APCs as dissemination investments designed around intended users and evidence use.